Tencent to Launch Regional Hub in Singapore

The Chinese technology conglomerate is pushing ahead with global expansion plans, despite recent app bans in India and the United States. Tencent is planning to open a new office in Singapore, which will be its regional hub for Southeast Asia, where it also has offices in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The Singapore office will also enable us to capture potential from the rapid pace of digitization and meet the demand for internet-based services and solutions in Singapore, Tencent said in a statement. Tencent’s cloud computing arm, which seeks to tap into the demand for remote IT services for home-based workers, as well as its financial cloud platform that provides digital banking services to small and medium enterprises, have been growing in the region amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The company had been discussing Singapore as a potential regional hub and geopolitical tensions accelerated its plans, according to a Bloomberg report. The company is already hiring for software engineers, data analysts, business development, and compliance roles in the city-state, according to its careers portal.

Singapore, with its business-friendly policies, is benefitting from the growing hostility towards Chinese tech firms in the U.S. and other markets. Chinese tech start-up ByteDance, the owner of video-sharing app TikTok, are among those which are shoring up its presence in the country, where it is looking to spend several billion dollars and add hundreds of jobs here over the next three years.

U.S. President Donald Trump has banned U.S. entities from dealing with Tencent’s super-app WeChat from September 20, while the company’s hit games PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) Mobile and Arena of Valor are banned in India.